


draw me like one of your french girls

by miraculouschatton



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Art Class AU, F/M, accidental sketchbook reveal?, adrien is so bad at drawing, as always, fav kids, just cute stuff on a rooftop, marinette is a queen, no nude drawings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-06-05 02:50:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15160832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miraculouschatton/pseuds/miraculouschatton
Summary: “Paris’ favorite cat is going to be taking art classes. Maybe you could model for me sometime?”In which Adrien takes an art class and his big mouth and bad art reveal a little more about himself than intended.





	1. Chapter 1

Going to public school meant a trade off for Adrien. He got to have friends, a sliver of freedom, and a real personal life for once. In return, he had to basically do whatever his dad asked him to do, which wasn’t that much of a trade off considering he’d be doing that either way. Currently, he was having a bit of trouble understanding his father’s reasoning in his extracurriculars.

“I just don’t understand why it’s necessary for me to take art lessons,” he began again, tentatively trying to persuade the brick wall which was Gabriel Agreste.

“Because, Adrien, one day you will work here with me and I expect you to have some design capability,” Gabriel said firmly. Did he really think Adrien had any hope of being a designer? Probably not, but he felt compelled to push his son towards the one thing he had some level of passion about.

“Fine, but can I at least go to the class?” Adrien pleaded. “I have enough private lessons as is, wouldn’t it be better for me to, I dunno, get inspiration from my peers or something?”

Gabriel pondered this concept for a moment. He hated the idea of Adrien being around strangers more than almost anything, and he further assumed Adrien would relentlessly plead to be unsupervised during the class, much as he had about going to public school.

“Fine,” Gabriel stated curtly. “You can go to the class, but I expect to hear no further complaint about this matter. Understood?”

Adrien nodded excitedly.  _ More freedom.  _ Well, just a little, and just for Adrien. Realistically he had all the freedom in the world as Chat Noir, it was just a little bit more personal as himself.

“Nathalie, call the studio and enroll Adrien in the next session of classes,” Gabriel commanded his assistant. She nodded and began calmly tapping away at her tablet, no doubt rearranging Adrien’s already busy schedule around his new classes. “And order him whatever supplies they say he needs,” Gabriel continued. Nathalie nodded again and silently wondered to herself how Gabriel or Adrien would function without her presence.

Adrien went upstairs to his room, pulled up his piano track on his phone, and began to prepare for his nightly patrol. Plagg zipped out from inside his jacket and glanced outside. 

“It’s raining again Adrien,” he complained. 

“Yeah, I can see that. I don’t like it anymore than you do, but Ladybug was expecting me ten minutes ago,” Adrien sighed, thinking about his Lady, out in the rain waiting for him.

“Plagg, claws out,” and with a groan from Plagg, Adrien quickly transformed into his superhero alter-ego and was out the window, quickly making his way across the rooftops of Paris. The rain always felt colder as Chat Noir than as Adrien. He’d mentally filed that away as one of the many differences between who is was in everyday life and who he was as a superhero. At a distance, he could see Ladybug waiting for him underneath the terrace of a closed rooftop cafe. It was lower than their normal meeting point, but near enough he saw her without spending much time trying to find her. After all, Chat Noir knew she had been waiting for him for some time now.

Dropping down next to Ladybug he saw her frown at him. “You’re late,” she said, feigning anger. He could hear a little amusement in her voice. “You’re ears are droopy too,” she giggled, flicking one of his flattened-out, soaked through cat ears. He couldn’t help but smile. Anyone else and it would have been annoying but Ladybug was just… Perfect.

“Sorry M’Lady, but my personal life needed attended to,” he grinned. “Paris’ favorite cat is going to be taking art classes. Maybe you could model for me sometime?”

Chat noticed Ladybug seem to momentarily tense, then laugh. “I can’t exactly see you being the moody artist type. And I’m not exactly the model type, Chaton.”

“I beg to differ M’Lady,” he said, cracking a smile as they began their nightly watch over Paris. The night drug on for what seemed like forever. It was a lovely summer in Paris, aside from the persistent rain, and everything had been annoyingly calm for the past few weeks. Not that Ladybug and Chat Noir didn’t appreciate the calm, it just felt unjust that during the time of year they were free from school and many of their responsibilities everything seemed more relaxed.

Ladybug’s transformation began to break first, her earrings beeping while the pair sat on top of a large office complex, overlooking the moderate nightlife of Paris on a summer night. The bars had long since closed, the majority of people now at home in their beds. Paris always had an influx of foreigners on holiday at this time of year, so the streets were full of drunks, shouting at each other in a rainbow of languages. While it was nice to spend time sitting with Chat, on calm nights it was always hard for Ladybug. She wanted to talk to him considering she did think of him as one of her closest friends, but she found it difficult to since she really didn’t want to slip up and give him clues to her personal life. Not minding the normal threat of discovery, she couldn’t stop thinking about his comment about art classes. They lived in Paris, a giant city with millions of people, but she couldn’t stop worrying over the possibility they could be taking a class together and she would never even know it. She smiled at how ridiculous the thought was. There was no way she and Chat Noir had ever met in real life, not while they were both outside of their costumes anyway.

“You better get going,” Chat Noir said, pulling her from her thoughts. “You’ve only got a couple minutes until you’re out of costume, and I have a feeling I’m not that lucky.”

Ladybug smiled. “Not tonight Chat.” As she got up to leave, she turned to him and waved. “Good luck with your art classes! You should show me some of your work later!” And with that, she was gone.

Chat Noir followed her descent with his eyes, watching as his Lady swung her way across Paris, into the darkness and away from him. He’d have to get good at drawing if she wanted to see his work.

And with that, he went home to practice.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> welcome to summer school buckaroos

Marinette was a little nervous about her first day in her art class. She and Nathaniel had both been offered merit scholarships to what was otherwise a very expensive session of courses. She was terrified that somehow, no matter how unlikely, her partner would be in this class, and she was absolutely sure she would recognize him if they were face-to-face. Worse yet, he would recognize her. 

Marinette swallowed her fears as she pushed a handful of supplies down in her backpack. She glanced at the clock. Marinette was supposed to walk with Nathaniel and she didn’t want to keep him waiting. They’d made plans to walk to the Saturday morning class together as they both knew they were probably going to be the odd ones out. The class was a figure drawing course taught by a number of Paris’ most prestigious art teachers. There were going to be live models, long lessons, and who knows what. Marinette had never been worried about the quality of her sketchbook before, but weeks ago she’d made the decision to save up and buy the nicest one she could find. She wanted to blend in as much as she could. Maybe no one would notice sub-par work if her supplies were high enough quality to blend in with the rich kids?

“Marinette, your friend is here!” Her mom called from downstairs, pulling Marinette from her anxiety. 

“Coming maman!” She yelled back, opening her purse to let Tikki in. She slung the backpack over her shoulder and made her way downstairs. Her parents and Nathaniel were in the bakery. She assumed her mom had come upstairs just to yell at her because there was  _ no way  _  she would have heard them all the way down there.

Marinette rounded the corner at the bottom of the steps and saw her dad handing Nathaniel a muffin from inside the glass case. 

“It’s on the house,” she heard her dad say. “It’s a new recipe, let me know if you like it.”

Nathaniel thanked Tom and looked to Marinette. He didn’t have that lovestruck look in his eyes anymore, but there was still some sense of admiration that made her blush. 

“We better get going,” Nathaniel smiled at her. “I don’t really want to be late for our first day.”

“Me either,” Marinette agreed, grabbing a bun from the glass case for herself. She gave her father a quick peck on the cheek and her mother a hug and then she and Nate were out the door. 

“I’m not going to lie,” he began. “I’m really nervous for this.”

“Same,” Marinette said, doing her best to have a reassuring smile. “I’m always anxious about new things though. Anyway, you’re amazing. Everyone is gonna love your work.”

Nate smiled at the compliment. “I just hope I remember how to draw people out of super suits,” he said with a nervous laugh. “It’s been awhile since I tried.”

“Oh come on, your drawings of Ladybug and Chat Noir are amazing!”

“They’re okay,” he always had a hard time accepting compliments. “I’m sure they’re going to be astounded by your design skills, too.”

“If I get to show them off, that is,” Marinette pushed a bit of hair behind her ear, feeling the weight of the supplies in her bag, their weight a daunting reminder of her nerves. “I’m pretty sure most of the drawing for this class is going to be nude.” 

Nathaniel reddened at her statement. “Are you sure?” he asked, his voice pitched higher than normal. “I mean, we’re 16! They’re not really going to bring naked people in, are they?”

“Did you even read the application? There’s a waiver for that, it’s the part your parents had to sign,” Marinette began to laugh as Nathaniel’s eyes widened. 

“I didn’t sign up for this,” Nathaniel moaned. “What if I fall in love with some naked model like a cliche romance novel!”

Marinette snorted at Nathaniel’s distress. “You’ll be fine, Nate. Maybe this is the summer love you need.”

______________________

Before long Nathaniel and Marinette were stood outside the Pantheon-Sorbonne University art hall. There were a number of older students there, most of them appearing to be frazzled young adults, many covered in clay, paint, or any number of other mediums. Nathaniel looked to Marinette for reassurance and she steeled herself. She put an arm around his shoulder and they walked up the tall marble steps together.

They separated from one another while they walked down the hall, looking for room A23. The rooms seemed out of order, as scatterbrained as the artists who seemed to practically live in the building. Finally, through sheer luck and a game of “rock, paper, scissors,” to decide their direction, they found A23.

The inside of the room was a mix of the expected and the not. Marinette knew walking into this that the course was an intimate one. Thirty kids to a session, five of them there on scholarship. She and Nathaniel made up two of the only kids worth less than a million euros in the room. The classroom was sparsely populated. It was obviously set up for many more students than what it was being given. There were long tables that stretched from one end of the lecture room to the other. There were five rows of these extended tables. Marinette could imagine the room full--it would be like an assembly line of art. Hundreds of kids working silently to compose their projects, praying for a good enough grade to somehow get involved in the oversaturated Parisian art scene upon graduation. The thought was almost insulting to the very idea of art, so Marinette pushed it from her mind and decided to worry about it another day.

She and Nathaniel walked through the room in a jagged sort of harmony. They stopped talking in words once they were over the threshold of the classroom even though everyone else inside continued to talk in hushed tones. The room was too big, too quiet, and too full of strangers. They spoke in desperate glances, confused eye movements, and vague gestures towards different areas of the room where they may potentially be most comfortable sitting. Eventually, they decided on sitting in the middle of the center table. It was as on the fence as they could be about a seating arrangement.

As soon as Marinette sat down she let out a breath she had been holding. She slowly sat her bag down and began to remove items from it, scared to make too much noise and somehow offend one of the obvious regulars in the room. No one had paid them any attention, and yet Marinette still felt the unrelentless pressure of newness. No one here knew she wasn’t rich, no one knew she was a scholarship student. It was fine. Everything was fine.

And then Adrien Agreste walked in the door looking just as nervous as Marinette and Nathaniel.

At that moment, everything was definitely  _ not fine.  _

  
  



End file.
